Happy New Year!!

We rang in the new year at our friends' house last night. Doods ran around for hours playing with their two dogs and their cat. She had a blast! Our friends kept asking if she ever stopped moving. Andy and I just shook our heads and laughed. "No! She never sits still!" Before we left for home, we changed her diaper and got her dressed in her Bob Bob (Spongebob) jammies so that when we got home, she could be transferred straight to bed and she'd stay asleep. She had different ideas! She started crying and kicking and wouldn't lay still in the bed. She asked for chocolate milk so we went out to get some. While I was holding her in the kitchen, she spotted some graham crackers and grabbed one. I realized that she hadn't eaten much because she was so busy running around. She ended up eating half of one of the packages of graham crackers that comes in a box. Apparently, she realized that her belly was empty when she sat still for a moment. So, the first night of 2011 we all went to bed after 2:30 am! I really hope that's not the trend for the new year!

Doodle is in love!

Doodle is completely, head over heels in love...with a plastic snowman. You know those blow form snow men that were so popular in years gone by? Yeah, I think she's going to marry one. Specifically, the one in our garage. Andy found someone on craigslist giving one away so we picked it up yesterday. Andy showed him to Doods through the car window and she thought it was pretty cool. Then we had to go to Lowes and she wanted to see him again in the trunk of the car. She did not, however, want to sit in her car seat after that so we decided to put him in the back seat with her. She kept trying to hold his hand and talk to him no matter how many times Andy told her that it wasn't going to talk back. She didn't care one bit, she just kept trying. When we got home, she stood talking to him the entire time that Andy and I emptied our groceries out of the trunk. When we tried to go inside, she started to cry. So, we told her to give him a hug and tell him goodbye. Well, once she realized that she's actually a little bit bigger than he is, she started walking inside still hugging him. It didn't go well. She couldn't really walk around his chubby features but she wasn't about to put him down. We did finally tear her away from him and get her inside where she seems to have forgotten about him for the moment. I was going to take pictures of the happy couple today but taking a nap seemed way more important since I woke up at least once every hour last night. Oh, and it got really cold out there! I put on fleece pajama pants when I got home from work just before three this afternoon and I've been avoiding the weather ever since. Maybe tomorrow I'll go get some pictures. (If I can get clothes on Doodle, that is. She just doesn't get that it's too cold to run around in just her diaper.)

Back by popular demand...

Ok, since you have all decided to check in the last couple of days (FINALLY) and found nothing new, here is a very quick update for today.

Doodle pooped in the tub. Yup, for the third time in her life, she pooped in her own bathwater. Luckily, she was standing up when it happened so it wasn't too bad but as soon as she saw the poop floating in there, she freaked out. Andy took care of the clean up for me because it was making me gag. He's such a good Daddy and husband! Hopefully, tomorrow she does something better. Actually, I just thought of something better to write about but it will have to wait for tomorrow so I can document it with some pictures. Let's just say that I think I've met my future son-in-law! :o)

New habits

Doodle has developed a whole host of new, adorable habits as of late. Here's a sampling:

Grabbing your hand, telling you "Walk", and then dragging you to wherever it is she wants you to go.

Alternative to the above, motioning you towards her and saying, "C'mon!"

Laying down on a pillow and pretending to sleep complete with fake snoring.

Yelling "BABEEEE" when she wants someone's attention. (Because that's how she seems to refer to herself.)

Taking off her diaper....a lot. I think she's started doing it every time she pees if she's not wearing pants to keep her from it. At least she throws it in the garbage can, though.

When she knows she's about to get in trouble, stopping what she's doing and saying, "HI" while giving the cheesiest grin known to man. She's trying to be disarming and succeeds sometimes.

Unzipping zippers. (There goes that safety precaution to protect the contents of my purse and the diaper bag!)

Pointing and saying, "Teeth" when she wants to brush her teeth (which is anytime she sees her toothbrush)

Putting on any shoes she can find. She kept trying to put on a pair of boots that were about 4 sizes to small and Andy said she looked so pathetic every time that we bought her a pair of rain boots that actually fit her. She's so funny running around the living room in her diaper and yellow rain boots with a monkey's face on them!

Turning off the tv, putting her hands together and resting the side of her face on them, and saying "Nigh nigh" when she's tired.

And yesterday, she laid herself down on the couch with her head on a pillow, pulled the blanket up over herself, and went to sleep all by herself for a nap. I couldn't believe it when I checked on her. She was way too quiet so I became concerned. The kid who NEVER sleeps alone had tucked herself in. It was amazing! And it gives me hope that she will one day be able to sleep by herself. She has the skills, now we just have to work on her putting them to use more often.

Dante's Inferno has nothing on a McDonald's Playplace

I'm baaaaack!! Ok, so I took a lot longer to get back to blogging than I meant to but Doodle's been teething (with her last set of teeth, YES!) and been very clingy as of late. We're still not through with this set of teeth but I have managed to find some time to upload pictures from my phone so that I have something to share.

Yesterday, Andy, Doods, and I took a trip up to Viera to check out Hobby Lobby. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Viera is where I used to work about 20 miles up I-95 from our place. We were almost home when our car just died. Thankfully, it didn't happen on the interstate but at the light to turn off the interstate exit ramp. We were coming to a stop and the car just quit. Andy and I looked at each other and I said, "Did the car just stall?" It most certainly had and we were stuck. Andy tried to start it and then pushed it off the road and tried some more. No luck! It would turn over but nothing beyond that. He did some investigating and found that there was a broken wire in some part between the spark plugs and the distributor cap (I think, I'm so non car savvy that it's ridiculous). Anyway, he thought he could fix it easily and called for a friend to come take him to the auto parts store down the road. Since we didn't think it would be a great idea to drive around with me and the baby in the backseat of his friend's Mustang, Doods and I walked to McDonald's to get something to drink and cool off. She'd been sleeping in her carseat the whole time and it was very hot out so we were worried about her being overheated. So, we went to Mickey D's and got some sweet tea and a hot fudge sundae and went out to the play area to eat, drink, and cool off. Doods wanted nothing to do with the hot fudge sundae but drank what seemed like a gallon of sweet tea. As she sat watching the kids running around, she got very antsy to go play.

Her first stop was a small area off to the side of the much larger climbing structure. It had a little piano like toy, an alligator to sit on, and a huge Happy Meal box to play inside with gears to turn. Really, it was quite a random little area but it made me happy because she couldn't get anywhere where I would have to climb up after her and the bigger kids were mostly ignoring it. The big kids weren't really looking out for little munchkins as they chased each other and one of them yelled "Oh, crap!" repeatedly. Not something I wanted Doodle getting into the middle of at all. So, she played in there for a while. One little boy about her height did come in (I think he was probably closer to three years old though because his speech was much clearer than Doodle's but they were the same height because my child is gargantuan) and Doodle had to copy everything he did. When he leaned against the wall, she leaned against it right beside him. When he went into the big ole Happy Meal, she was poking her head in to join him. It was cute really and demonstrated that she is on target developmentally because most kids her age still participate in parallel play (doing the same thing beside but not with other kids) as opposed to actually playing together.

Then she found the tunnel. Oh, she loved the tunnel and I loved it because it was still separate from the rest of the play place. She would go in one end and as it curved so she couldn't see me from the end she entered, she'd start yelling for me so that I would poke my head into the other end. She must have run through that thing about six time straight. And she would have kept going if I hadn't seen Andy and his friend walking back from our car to his friend's car at the gas station next door. Bad sign because that meant they weren't driving our car which meant that it still wouldn't start. We ended up having it towed and found out the timing belt had broken. It will take about eleven hundred dollars to fix that and replace the water pump since they will already be in there and fix a broken motor mount and blah blah blah. We're very lucky that it didn't break on the interstate and we're hoping that since we were at a stop it didn't ruin any other engine components.

Here are a couple pictures and some video footage of our trip to hell, er, McDonald's Playplace.




This is the piano thingy. She had fun banging on the keys but I think she enjoyed it even more when and older boy can and played. She was dancing up a storm to his tuneless banging. Then she tried to play with him and he didn't like it very much. But really, he was at least 10 and way to old so I kind of let her run him off. Oops!





Doodle loves McDonald's sweet tea. She really is a true Southern girl at heart when it comes to that. Of course, she loves anything that comes in a cup this big. You should see her with a Route 44 cup from Sonic. It's true love!





Here she is climbing through her tunnel. Well, until some girl comes and tries to climb in with her and I have to rescue my child. The video cuts off kind of abruptly but the girl that climbed in with her got out on her own without me really having to do anything. I think once she saw that I wasn't going to make Doods stop having fun she decided to go back to the big climbing part.







This is a bonus video because I uploaded the wrong one to YouTube the first time. How I got them confused, I'm not sure. This is a video from some time last fall of our dogs, Charlotte (the bigger black and white mutt) and Brenna (the smaller all black Dachshund/Chihuahua mix), wearing their snow boots. They were for when we went to Pennsylvania last winter. We never used them but it was hilarious watching Brenna try to walk while wearing them.

A little time off from blogging

So, I took a little time off from blogging because real life kind of got in the way. The past couple of weeks have been busy for me with work because I've had to take up the comp shop again while the girl who took over from me went on vacation. I'd be annoyed with this if her vacation wasn't to go see her husband who just came home from serving overseas. Yeah, can't argue with that one at all. (For those of you who don't know, I used to do the comparison shop for my store. I would download a list each week onto a PDA and go to the dark side AKA Walmart and compare the prices on the list. Some weeks the list was about 700 items. The past three weeks, it was over 1,000 each week. That's a lot of comp shopping. And I can't get it all done in one day because it's mind numbing. And I took Doods with me and she can't deal with being in the stroller for more than a couple hours anymore. It was easy peasy when she was four months old and would sleep, wake up for a bottle, and then sleep some more while I did it. Now I spend more time trying to keep her happy than I do actually comp shopping. So I conned, er, convinced another girl who needed hours to take it over. Thank you, Bobbi!!!) I also had to work two overnight shifts last week which has thrown off the entire household's sleep schedule. Completely thrown it off to the point where Doodle decided to finally wind down and go to sleep last night at about 4:30 am. Yeah, not fun for any of us. Now we are focusing on getting everyone to sleep at normal times and not having major meltdowns in the process. Wish us luck!

And my camera is broken so I have to use pictures and video from just my phone. Luckily, I have a very good camera on my phone. But, since I haven't had time, it just hasn't happened. So, expect some fun stuff coming up in the next couple of days. Doodle is a stinker and a goofball and I've got some cute pictures of her lately so I'll upload them soon. But for now, it's time to try to get our sleep cycles back in the right rhythm and get her settled down for bed. Sweet dreams!

Quick note

Ok, I'm always begging for comments on here but I just changed the setting so that you don't have to have a Blogger or gmail account to comment. So, anybody can leave some Doodle love! Of course, I just ask that everyone is nice and leaves their real name if they leave a comment. Ok, that's all. Carry on with your day, especially Ashley who is at this moment in labor with my newest little cousin, Colton! Can't wait for Doods to have a cousin nearby that is close in age! Ok, so they'll be able to play better in a couple of years, but still, it's closer than Carrie and her new little brother or sister all the way in Pennsylvania!

Spaghetti Dinner

Friday night, Doodle and I had spaghetti for dinner. I gave Doodle her plate fixed the way I always fix spaghetti for her. A little sauce, the noodles cut up into about one inch pieces, and lots of cheese. She was content with that until I sat down to eat my spaghetti. My long, curled up strands of spaghetti that had to be twirled around a fork and slurped up. Suddenly, she was no longer content to eat off her plate anymore. Or with her little toddler fork. My plate, my food, and my fork all became hers. So I figured the best thing I could do was document it for all to see. She was really cute trying to figure out who to eat the noodles as they kept sliding off the fork and hanging out of her mouth. I was just glad that I don't like a lot of sauce on my pasta or she would have been a ginormous mess! (And according to my spell check "ginormous" is indeed a word and spelled correctly. Who would have known??) On to the pictures with a couple of bonus pictures at the end just because I can!




Her initial technique was to feed herself with her right hand while holding the fork as a prop in the left.



Then she tried the fork out. So far, so good, she got a piece of spaghetti on it!





Oops, still need some help to get the whole piece into the mouth. Notice the piece stuck to her chest. I'm sure the got fed to the dogs eventually!



Ah, there's a good mouthful! The fork has now moved to the other hand to be used as a prop.




She decided to eat some of the sausage off her own plate but couldn't quite give up my plate. See how she's protectively placed her hand on it. She's just waiting for me to try to take it away.




Here you can see the fork I got to use while she eats with my fork. I could have gotten another adult sized fork but I figure since she still can't wash dishes and I'd end up having to clean it (or put it in the dishwasher really, but it's still an extra step), I'd just make do with the little Take and Toss fork.



Such concentration!!




Here I managed to get my fork back because she wanted help. Of course, her technique at eating off a fork that Momma is holding isn't quite the same as when she holds it herself.




This is the best "after" shot I could get. As I said earlier, I'm glad I don't like a lot of sauce on my pasta. She was just a little orange around the mouth, chin, cheeks, and nose. None in the hair, thankfully, because she HATES having her hair washed. Actually, it's the rinsing she hates by why split hairs. (Hahaha, I'm so punny!)







This has nothing to do with our dinner but I thought it was funny. Doods helped me load a case of bottled water into the fridge. See them all on the bottom shelf behind her?? Well, apparently, it wore her out so she had to take a rest right there in the refrigerator.



And this one for two reasons. One: see how tall she is! She can open doors with lever handles.(Don't worry, Granma and Granpa, we always keep the front door locked so she can't open it.) Pretty soon we're going to have to put door knob covers on all doors out of the house. Two: see how smart she is!! She has the key to our van and she's trying to unlock the door with it. I guess watching us unlock the door at our apartment for those seven months had a bit of an impact on her because we only use the garage door opener now.

Doctors Visits

Last week, Doodle had her 18 month check up. Dr. Lockhart said that she is growing very well and was very pleased with her development. Doods kept her laughing with her crazy antics. She climbed into her stroller and leaped into my lap repeatedly while I was trying to talk to the doctor. She also kicked the doctor out of the room by closing the door behind her and yelling, "BYE BYE!" Again. She did it last time too. Good thing Dr. Lockhart is a good sport about it and just laughs! Doodle handled the entire visit very well until it came time to get her shots. I really can't blame her for not liking that part because I don't like it either. :o(

Official Stats:

Height - 32 1/2 inches, about 75-80th percentile (Dr. Lockhart thinks she's probably gearing up for a growth spurt since her height hasn't gone up too much since her 15 month visit. Her chart for her height looks like stair steps because she levels off and then hits a spurt and then levels off again. Since she's leveled off this time, she'll probably hit a spurt again. We don't go back again until she's two, though, so it might not show up so much as a spurt on the chart by then. She's still tall for her age, though, and if you double her height, it's three inches taller than me!)

Weight - 29 lbs, 12 1/4 oz, off the chart so 100th percentile (This is where she's been since she was about three months old, if not earlier. Dr. Lockhart has no concerns at all about her weight. She's just a big kid. Funnily enough, though, in the elevator leaving this appointment, a woman asked, "How old is she? Six months?" I really had to restrain myself to not laugh at that. She's off the charts for an eighteen month old and this lady was asking if she was a year younger than that?? Apparently she doesn't spend ANY time around babies!)

That was last Wednesday. Today we took her in again because she's been so cranky and clingy and out of sorts this week that I was convinced she had to have an ear infection. She's been rubbing at her ears a bit and my ears hurt so I thought maybe I'd picked something up and given it to her. Well, Dr. Lockhart was out of the office today so we saw the other doctor in the office, Dr. Hernandez. He was very nice, very gentle, and very knowledgeable. (I just love this doctor's office! If you know anyone having a baby who needs a pediatrician, Osler Pediatrics in great!) He asked us a ton of questions and examined Doods and couldn't find anything specific to pin her behavior on. He said she might just have a simple virus that was making her feel blah but since she couldn't tell us what was wrong, he couldn't really go past that. He did look at her ears and said they looked perfect and he could tell that she's never had an ear infection. It was really funny when he asked if she'd had one before and Andy and I said no. He literally did a double take and looked at us like we maybe we misunderstood the question. I quickly told him that she's not in day care and he seemed a lot less confused. "Oh, that explains it!" We've really lucked out in that sense because Doods has never really been sick. We've taken her in a few times thinking she might be ill but it never really amounts to anything. Still, I'd rather we bring her in and they tell us that there is nothing wrong with her than for us to say there's nothing wrong only to find out later that something is wrong.

And because every post is better with pictures, here's a collage of all of Doodle's birthday portraits!

Christmas in August??

Ok, so I'm way out of season but I just scanned this picture today. It got wet sometime in one of our two moves since it was taken so the original is in kind of poor shape. I just couldn't resist posting it here because she's changed so much in just 8 months. Look at that chubby face and those fat little feet! She's just too cute. She was terrified of Santa, as you can see. I think that makes it even more priceless than if she was happy, though.

Daddy's Girl

Just a short little video today showing Doodle's reaction when she saw Andy walking out of work the other day.




How could you not be happy after a reaction like that? I get the same kind of thing when I walk into the house from work but she's running towards me as she does it. It makes my day! It's like being a rock star in your own house. If only she would stay that excited to see us as she gets into her teen years...

I'll post some more tomorrow and I'll give you all the details from her 18 month check up today. I'm still trying to figure out how she got to be a year and a half old!

Imagination at work

Doodle's starting to exhibit signs of great imagination lately. It's fun to watch her learn to put some concepts together, like treating her baby doll like a real baby. She loves to feed her baby its bottle and rock her before putting her "night nights". She also likes to share her food with her dolls. The funniest yet has been watching her try to feed French fries to her Littlest Pet Shop toy that came in her Happy Meal. It's the equivalent of trying to feed Doodle a ten foot long four by four! Luckily, her toys are good sports about the force feedings.

Last week, while we were at Ikea, I handed Doodle a stuffed dog to see if she liked it. She started petting it and saying, "Niiiie. Niiiie. Niiiie." It took me a second to figure out she was saying, "Nice" like she was petting a real dog. We have worked hard to make sure she treats the dogs and cat nicely so that they aren't scared of her and don't try to hurt her. Last night, while I was sitting on the edge of the tub watching her play in the bath, she started petting my arm and saying, "Niiie, niiiiiiie, niiiiiiiiie!" It was too cute for words!

After her bath, I took her out to the living room to get a dry diaper on. We were playing for a while and Andy was laying on the couch. Well, he ended up falling asleep and snoring. Doods stops what she's doing and puts her finger to her lips and says, "SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Then she walks over to Andy, smacks him on the arm, and gets in his face and does the same thing when he opens his eyes. I told him that she didn't want him snoring anymore. It didn't work. He fell back to sleep and started snoring again. Well, this time, Doods took the opportunity while I was hiding from her under a blanket to hit Andy in the face with a book. He decided that it was time to get up and go to bed. I guess that method was a little more effective than shushing him!


Edited to add: Earlier today Andy called me into the living room. He told Doods to keep playing and not pay attention to me because he wanted me to see what she was doing. She was trying to put her shorts on her baby doll. It was so adorable! She's also tried to put her shoes on her doll before, too. She did manage to put one of her own shoes on earlier today. Pretty impressive for a not quite eighteen month old!

Not much going on

Not much going on with us this week. We've been hanging out at the house. Uncle Alex came to visit us for a couple days and hung around the house with us. Doodle was very clingy Monday and Tuesday. As in, every time I started to put her down she started screaming, crying big ole tears, and threw herself on the ground. It made for a fun time trying to cook dinner Monday night. No wonder the casserole I made is barely edible. But, she seems to be in a better mood today. Of course, that could be because she's taken over a bag of cheddar cheese rice cakes as her own. This is the second bag I've bought this week. She loves them! She hasn't been great at eating actual food the past couple of days so I'm just happy that she's eating anything at all.

Over the past two weeks or so, Doodle has developed some new skills. One is throwing things. She's got quite an arm on her for someone so small. Just ask Uncle Alex! She beaned him in the kneecap with a block last night and I didn't think he was going to be able to walk for an hour afterward. She also likes to throw anything she's decided she's finished with, such as her dinner, her drink, or her toys. It's a hard habit to break because she's quite fast and takes you by surprise with her throwing. The other skill she's developing is throwing...tantrums. She's started kicking her legs and screaming when she doesn't get her way. What's her favorite thing to scream you ask? "NO, Momma!" Every time she does it, though, all I can think of is that she's using two words together like they asked us about at her 15 month check up. That was the only skill she didn't hit on the checklist but her doctor pointed out that it is expected anywhere from 15 months to something like 22 months. I'm just happy that next week when we go for her 18 month check up we can say that we've reached that milestone, too.

Lastly, Doodle wanted me to say, "Happy birthday to Aunt Katie!" Love ya, leetle seester!

Weekend in Orlando

This weekend we took a trip to Orlando. We went to SeaWorld and hung out with some of Andy's best friends. Doodle had a lot of fun (and so did Andy and I)! Here are some pictures of what we did:



At SeaWorld, we tried to escape the heat and the crowds by going to the underwater viewing area for the dolphins. It's very peaceful in there when there aren't five thousand tourists shouting over the calm music being piped in. Unfortunately, there were five thousand tourists shouting over the calm music being piped in! Doodle enjoyed watching the water though and a few dolphins swam by so we could see them. (Not for this picture, though!)




After the dolphins, we went to see the manatees. Such peaceful, giant creatures. This area wasn't quite as crowded so we actually got to see the animals. Aren't this mother and baby just the cutest? (I know, cute is a relative term! They may not be fuzzy and furry cute but they are still cute!)




After the manatees, we headed across the park to cool off in the water fountains in the kids' area. Andy took the first turn. Doodle wasn't really feeling the crowds and the water but Andy felt much cooler afterwards! Here they are heading out. The picture is a little fuzzy but I dare anyone to say she looks like me after seeing this picture. I swear that my DNA is not in that child at all sometimes when I look at them together!




After Andy's turn, I took Doodle into the water. We found a little fountain to play with in the middle of the insanity. Doods liked putting her foot over it. So did a couple of other kids who kept standing on it and not letting anyone else play. I had to keep reminding them to share, which only helped with the ones who spoke English. :-/





Doods and I bravely stood in line (for about 10 minutes) to ride the Jazzy Jellies ride. Ok, so it was a short line and it was for a kiddie ride, but it's hard to keep a one year old interested in something like that. She kept trying to push the operator's buttons while we waited at the gate. Here I'm trying to show her what the ride does and get her excited to go up in the air and spin around. I'm saying, "WOOOOOOOOWWW!" She was saying it too but she didn't really know why!





This is us trying to get off the ride. Doods loved it! She didn't want to get off and she was trying to spin the car around some more here. While we were up in the air, she just kept saying, "WWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" (Interesting side note, the kid getting out of the car behind us in the picture ended up falling out. Now I see why I heard his mom tell his dad, "I told you to HELP him out!")




Later that night we met up with some of Andy's best friends for dinner. Doodle had fun hanging out with her "uncles". Afterward, we went back to the hotel room and Andy's friend Sammy and his family came to hang out. This is Sammy's little boy, Samuel, playing with a cabinet. He is Doodle's new boyfriend. They had a lot of fun playing together and kissing. Open mouth, slobbery kisses. Samuel will be one at the end of August. Doodle outweighs him by about ten pounds and is several inches taller than he is. It's like comparing an ant to a grizzly bear! But, he's gotten so much bigger than when he was born last year almost two months early. I have to find the picture of them from the first time we met little Samuel. Talk about Doodle looking ginormous!





Sunday we went to visit Andy's grandmother in Kissimmee. This three generations of Andy's family. I think Doodle weighs almost as much at Grandma Blohm! But, Grandma was so happy to see Doodle and let her play with all of the stuffed animals in the living room.




Andy even thought to take a picture of me with Doodle. Usually I'm the one behind the camera. :o)



Here we are again. For all of you who have told me to kiss/hug/squeeze the baby, here's proof that I do! :o)

See how big I'm getting?

I made Doodle a pair of baby legs out of women's knee socks. I love how silly they look on her chubby little legs! She enjoyed them for a while.





But then she had a bit of a breakdown! See how mad she is??





I call these my Lady Gaga sunglasses because they have sparkles on them. I guess that makes Doodle Baby Gaga when she's wearing them!




She looks like such a big girl in this picture! Also, you can see the shirt I made for her for the 4th of July. She helped with the red, white, and blue theme by getting red Hi-C all down the front of it. Good thing it's three weeks after the 4th of July in this picture! (You can also see her latest battle scar by her eye. She was running down the hall, tripped, and slammed her face into the doorjamb. It looked a lot worse than it was. She has inherited my gracefulness, which is to say none at all!)




She's usually really good at feeding herself, unless she's eating applesauce. It gets EVERYWHERE!! She likes to use it as hair gel as well.




She LOVES ribs! She even likes chewing on the bones. I can't pull pieces of meat off fast enough for her most of the time. As soon as I put a piece on her plate, she's shoving it in her mouth and reaching for another piece.






After eating and getting covered in food, she needs a bath. She loves bathtime! She thought it was very funny to splash the day I took my camera into the bathroom with me. Usually she plays with her millions of toys that Gramma and Aunt Katie got her for Christmas.




Lately, she likes to lay on her belly in the tub and try to breathe underwater. She hasn't quite got the hang of that yet! (But, she does pose well!)




Here's a video showing Doodle saying "Ta-da" and saying "Yay, yay, yay" while bouncing. Sorry it's from one side of the baby gate while she's on the other side. It was the only way I could keep her from trying to take the camera.




This is a video from bathtime. Doodle shows how she sings our little swimming song and then demonstrates how poorly she can breathe underwater.

I haven't forgotten!

I have new pictures and new videos to share but Doodle's been kind of clingy as of late so I haven't had time to upload them yet. But I will soon! I promise!

In the meantime, this is from Doodle herself:

"daafhfd b b vh"

(She hit a whole bunch of other keys but they ended up opening menus and shortcuts all over the place, so that's all she gets to say tonight. :o)

50% Mom + 50% Dad = 100% Doodle

Watching Doodle grow up and start to develop her own personality is so much fun. However, sometimes it is still fun to attribute personality traits to genetics. We're always saying, "Oh, Doodle is definitely your daughter, just look at how she _______ (fill in the blank)!" Here's a little list of what she got from her Momma and what she got from her Dada.

Momma - She's got her Momma's smarts, book smarts that is. Ok, so she doesn't really have book smarts yet but she's very intelligent and she picks up on new tasks and concepts very quickly. And she LOVES her books! That trait is straight from Momma.

Dada - Fidgety fingers that need to touch everything. This is a totally normal toddler trait but she is just like Andy when she touches things. To this day Andy still says that he's "just looking" at everything while he picks it up and flips it over and plays with it. I can already hear Doodle saying the same thing for the next several (35 or so at least) years.

Momma - Her chunkiness. Since I weighed over 10 pounds at birth, I went into pregnancy expecting a big baby. At 8 pounds, 7 ounces, Doodle did not disappoint too much. She's been off the charts big since birth and still was as of her 15 month appointment. She's slimming down a a lot as she becomes more active but I still get stopped whenever we're out by someone commenting on how big she is. I always tell them that she's just very healthy.

Dada - Her looks! She looks just like her Daddy. People that see her with me tell me she looks like me and I always tell them that they should see her father. They'd take back their words. She's Andy in a dress. One of the first things to Andy when I saw her was, "She's got your upper lip." (Keep in mind I was drugged and exhausted at the time so coherent thoughts were few and far between!)

Momma - Her talkativeness. She will talk to anybody and everybody when we are out. If she doesn't have anyone's attention, she'll start yelling at people walking by or at the other end of the aisle. She just wants to chat with them (and listen to them say how pretty and smart she is).

Dada - The love of all furry, four legged animals. I often joke that Doodle loves the cat more than she loves me and sometimes I wonder if its more true than even I realize. She loves to pet, pat, kiss, hug, chase, catch, and torment Louie, Brenna, and Charlotte. She can say all of their names. She tells them to "SSSHHHHHH!" when they make noise and likes to sit next to them whenever they are still.

What a difference a year makes!

Here are pictures of Doodle from last July. She was five months old and just learning to roll over. It's amazing how things have changed in such a short time!

Looking to the future

As all parents do, I've been contemplating what Doodle will be when she grows up based on her current behavior. Here are some of my ideas.

Roller coaster designer - She's already an adrenaline junkie at 17 months old. She loves being upside down and going fast. She likes being dropped and thrown in the air. She's definitely going to ride roller coasters even if she doesn't design them.

An Olympic runner and/or swimmer - The child is happiest when she's running free. Period. I don't know if it's the running that makes her so happy or the being free. Either way, she loves it. She also loves water. She has since her first bath at 8 weeks because it took that long to lose her cord stump. She even sings a little song about swimming. It goes something like this "Swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming." Yeah, it's one that I taught her but it's cuter when she does it.

A mommy - She LOVES the baby doll that Aunt Katie bought for her. She carries it around and rocks it. She even sings the dry diaper song to her (yeah, I taught her that song too). I just hope she gets out of the habit of carrying kids around by their leg by the time she has her own.

A scientist - She's fascinated with figuring out how to do new things. Maybe she can translate that into finding cures for diseases or inventing new machines or robots.

An artist - She loves to "draw" anytime she can manage to get possession of a pen or pencil. My address book is very well decorated since she got her hands on it. She also loves her bath crayons. Now if I could just get her to stop trying to eat her regular crayons long enough to actually get to use them she'd probably love them, too.

Doodle's Favorite Things

Favorite foods: Macaroni and cheese, fruit cocktail, bananas, animal crackers

Favorite toys: Anything that is not a toy! Plus her baby dolls and stuffed animals

Favorite words: BYE! Uh oh! Hi! Momma, Dada, and BooBoo (for Brenna)

Favorite part of the day: Bath time. She loves to play in the tub but hates the actual washing part!

Favorite thing to do at midnight: Run laps around the couch. Anything to keep herself and her Momma awake when they should be sleeping.

Favorite thing to do at noon: Wake up and start her day

Favorite store: Target. They call her "Target Baby" at my store. I really don't think half of the team members know her real name! She thinks that anybody in a red shirt is her friend. But, she doesn't want to work there when she grows up. One of the girls I work with asked her the other day and her answer was a definite "NO!"

Favorite object: By far, this would be a phone. She pretends like anything rectangular is a phone. Remote controls, McDonald's toys, iPods, you name it, it's a phone to Doodle. When she gets a real phone, watch out. She likes to say hi and then hang up!

Favorite activities: Brushing her teeth, sliding down her slide in the living room, rocking her baby dolls, taking her diaper off and running around naked

Favorite TV show: We don't have cable so she only gets to watch qubo which most people have never heard of. Her favorite show is Jacob Two Two. Well, I'm assuming its her favorite because it's the only one she can pronounce. Her Granma would be proud because the show is Canadian.

Favorite pet: She loves Brenna (dog), Charlotte (dog), and Louie (cat) all the same. She says all of there names and tries to pick them all up even though Louie weighs almost as much as Doodle. (Yes, our cat is the biggest of the three!) They all run away from her, though.


Favorite people (besides Momma and Dada): Granma and Granpa. She can say both in sign language. I think she uses the same verbal word for both because they sound so much alike, though.

Favorite outfit: A pretty dress with sneakers

Favorite book: A tie between her Peter Pan board book and the duck book that Granma bought for her that nobody likes to read because it's soooooooooo repetitive

Favorite animals (aside from our pets): Ducks and fish (or "ish" as she calls them)